


the darling heart

by AvaRosier



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: ambiguously canon, set during 1x13, some jake & abby, some marcus & abby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 12:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1779976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaRosier/pseuds/AvaRosier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Serenity in the face of certain death is hard to explain and it scares people, most of all one’s self. Abby is a doctor; she’s held countless lives in her hands. From the moment you are born, you are dying. They’ve been scraping by on the Ark after the Cataclysm for so long, as oxygen slowly ran out and hypoxia drained their minds, believing that they were the last of humanity and, faced with the brink of extinction, they'd fought so hard to survive. Five percent does not fit over a thousand people inside. Abby is dying. She has always been dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the darling heart

There’s a moment, just before you fall asleep, when you suddenly experience the sensation of falling, only to wake up in your own bed, safe.  Abby can feel the gravitational forces pushing her down into the floor, against the bulkhead of the Mecha station as it passed into the Earth’s atmosphere. Over the roar, she’s trying hard to not analyze every clang and every vibration as the sign of imminent destruction. By now, the Ark must be breaking up, some of the stations exploding.

She searches the faces around her, their eyes naked with fear, mouths moving in a prayer for salvation. Sinclair can’t stop staring down at his tablet and she sees him whisper ‘ _Arrow_ ’ with regret. One hundred and forty-seven people extinguished just like that; one thousand seven hundred and twenty three before that, then three hundred and twenty one. Their hands, much like hers, are linked with those of the people next to them—a reminder that whatever happens, they won’t suffer it alone. Marcus’ hand is firm in her own, and it _is_ a comfort.

Maybe she’s been alone for too long; and maybe her isolation after Jake and Clarke was a form of self-abnegation. She’d been two years ahead of Jake in school; knowing of him but his presence in her life was peripheral. Until she was twenty-two and a doctor. Always so pragmatic and stubborn. People frequently mistook her reservation for coldness. But she did care—very deeply and she pushed the boundaries of the law when treating her patients.  

Jake was…he was like the sun, she supposed, although she didn’t have the actual experience of the planetary body to accurately make that description. But he’d been warm, and she always smiled more with him. He could be so maddeningly optimistic, and principled in his outlook in life. The more authority Abby took on, the more she found herself having to condone for the good of the many. She truly hadn’t thought Thelonious would imprison and float Jake. If she had known, would she still have tried to stop the transmission? Would the truth have been worth it?

Forgiving Thelonious had been easier than forgiving herself.

 

 

Serenity in the face of certain death is hard to explain and it scares people, most of all one’s self. Abby is a doctor; she’s held countless lives in her hands. From the moment you are born, you are dying. They’ve been scraping by on the Ark after the Cataclysm for so long, as oxygen slowly ran out and hypoxia drained their minds, believing that they were the last of humanity and, faced with the brink of extinction, they'd fought so hard to survive. Five percent does not fit over a thousand people inside. Abby is dying. She has always been dying.

She remembers Vera Holland, one of her first cancer patients. The woman had absorbed the news with all the shock of the condemned, Abby had held her as she cried, but then the sixty year-old woman had stilled and composed herself. She took two weeks to get her affairs in order, to say goodbye to her son and granddaughters, before she filed for euthanasia. Her application was accepted. They were always accepted. Resources were too precious and fighting a lengthy and intensive battle against cancer at her age was frequently viewed as too costly.

 

 

You don’t know fear until you have a child. When Clarke was born, she was so tiny and so utterly dependent on her parents for everything. Abby’s mother told her: _you have to grow your heart bigger than your body_. Life became a progression from one moment of keeping an eye on Clarke toddling down the halls, feeling a clench of worry when she disappeared around a corner before Abby caught up, to the next moment of keeping an eye on Clarke’s life signs on the monitors as if her constant vigilance would keep the screen from going dark. When they sent her child down to the Earth where she could no longer protect her, Abby understood what that process meant. The sensation of having your heart walking around outside your body; it left her feeling hollow. As if she were already a ghost.

The last words Clarke had for her were filled with pain and anger; censure.  Her daughter is so much like her; and Abby wishes…

 

 

Sinclair checks his tablet again. “Five thousand feet, sixty-five miles per hour. We’re under speed. Parachutes have deployed.”

 

This plan is Thelonious’ white-knight move; the end-game courage of human civilization when there are no other moves left on the board. Maybe you can only be brave when you’re risking everything. Marcus came to her room the night before.  When he pressed a gentle, chaste kiss onto her lips, Abby decided she was done being alone. She took him by the hand and brought him into her bed and they made love and it was wonderful. They came and went, like waves on a shore in the movies she’s seen; beyond brave because they were already dead. 

But Clarke is on the Earth, Abby has heard her voice. Against all the odds, she has survived. She will never see Clarke’s face again; never brush her lips over her soft, pale hair. But her love for Clarke is always there; it is like a perpetual light that spills out of her lungs _Be brave_ , she prays across the miles.  

 

Abby feels no sadness; believe her when she says she will be redeemed.

**Author's Note:**

> credit for inspiration goes to "My Friend, Nothing Is In Vain" by C.E. Morgan, in the course of which reading I was inspired to write this for Abby. Sometimes I try different writing approaches, and this is one of those times.


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